Why do so many new players not get the inventory system?

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I was able to add an image to the product folder in the viewer's "Marketplace Listings" window, and it was redelivered from Marketplace just fine.

Doesn't it need to have a resolution of 256x256 to work as a preview image though? I thought I read something about that and larger images don't render when I hover the mouse over the folder.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

49 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Doesn't it need to have a resolution of 256x256 to work as a preview image though? I thought I read something about that and larger images don't render when I hover the mouse over the folder.

Inventory previews are limited to 256x256 resolution, but you can use any size texture (upload from computer, choose from inventory) to create a preview. They just get resized down to the correct resolution.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Inventory previews are limited to 256x256 resolution, but you can use any size texture (upload from computer, choose from inventory) to create a preview. They just get resized down to the correct resolution.

I've gotten lazy and started doing actual "screen shots" (Windows not SL), cropping and saving to my PC then uploading.  Of course, they end up all skewed due to the size / resolution! 🙂

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I've gotten lazy and started doing actual "screen shots" (Windows not SL), cropping and saving to my PC then uploading.  Of course, they end up all skewed due to the size / resolution! 🙂

 

Why not use the snapshot tool in the image picker? (Second button from the left.) It would skip a couple steps in your process.

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Why not use the snapshot tool in the image picker? (Second button from the left.) It would skip a couple steps in your process.

Good idea - it hadn't occurred to me!

[lovestofu]

SL is full of knowledge you only acquire by playing it.

1. You need to wear some pre-mesh items and it's not immediately obvious that they don't matter entirely or at all. Eyebrows? Yes these control the shape of the eyebrow, sort of, but not the texture of the eyebrow on the mesh head.
2. The inventory system itself is full of quirks, like Add versus Wear, which throw pretty much every new user. Experienced users will smugly chime in that you should be using Add not Wear to manage what you currently have on, and yet it is still not the default.
3. Wearing up to 38 attachments as "outfits" is a different system compared to other games, where you equip items in pre-configured slots.
4. The delay between attaching an object and seeing it render in world makes it a bit difficult to learn what is going on. Not everyone has a mental model of servers and latency. When an action is performed and the user gets no feedback from the interface, and has not been educated in how SL works, they will assume funny things and appear severely confused to the experienced user.

[Orwar]

54 minutes ago, lovestofu said:

The inventory system itself is full of quirks, like Add versus Wear, which throw pretty much every new user.

54 minutes ago, lovestofu said:

Wearing up to 38 attachments as "outfits" is a different system compared to other games, where you equip items in pre-configured slots.

   SL isn't really that different from that system, with the quirk that we can wear multiple items in the same slot (when using add rather than wear). Trouble is, because SL makes no distinction in object type between a pair of gloves and a top, and so unlike how things were before rigged mesh, when it very clearly mattered which attachment point you put things on, chances are that by the time you hit the 38 attachment point cap, 35 of those items are all competing for the right hand slot (because that's the default, and why should creators bother changing the attachment point? Takes them several seconds, you know!) - and because the option to wear is meant to replace the thing in that 'slot', things get chaotic.

   I do feel like removing the 'wear' option altogether would make things less confusing, but I'm guessing it's trickier than just throwing a switch somewhere. Besides, certain avatar components absolutely can not be worn in multiples; eyes, skin, body shape, system hair - doing so results in a bake fail, so those particular ones rather need the 'wear' option. 

   Do new people need to understand why or how that works though? Not immediately anyway, I suppose. Drilling people into using the add option religiously seems to work quite fine usually (and you often get a lot of opportunity to remind them along the way!). Besides, the options to add and wear objects from the inventory does suit quite nicely with how the outfit options work, although at least 'Wear - Replace Current Outfit', 'Wear - Add to Current Outfit', and 'Take Off - Remove from Current Outfit' do at least have more descriptive names.

   But that raises the question of why the heck are all those options there, why would you want to wear two different outfits at once? I'm not entirely sure why that was a thing originally, but I do find them terribly useful the way I use them. Especially with my alt who now uses two different bodies (Lara 5.3 and LaraX); I have two 'base' outfits, which are all the components for my complete avi without any clothes or accessories, and then I have outfits which contain just a certain set of clothes - boots, a dress or top + bottom, accessories, and a save stick for that outfit's alpha and heel settings, which lets me very quickly throw on an outfit to go shopping with, TP home, take off just the clothes, try on demos, throw some clothes back on, and head back to buy the things I decided I want. And it saves me some inventory elements as it means I can save a buttload of inventory links from not copying the whole set of my base avatar into each outfit - but I'll admit that's probably only useful for someone as fastidious as I about keeping a pedantically tidy inventory with a limited element count.

   Also, anyone who've played a game like Diablo II (inventory Tetris simulator!), World of Warcraft (items take up one inventory slot out of a given limit, and bags which increase inventory limit being crafted/found items, items stacking to a certain point, usually some items such as crafting materials are required in several stacks worth to craft things, etc), or Space Engineers (items use slots, but inventories are limited not by the amount of different items, but the volume of the items, and also has a weight factor which is extremely important when trying to figure out whether or not a ship will actually fly and how many newtons of thrust are going to be required to increase/decrease the velocity of the craft, and then there's the whole conveyor thing) - SL's inventory system doesn't even appear all that complicated. Especially since anyone who has ever modded a game (which I dare say must be 'most people' these days) probably are familiar with how folders function as they'll have had to dig up the data folders of those games to stick in their addons, or at the very least directed a mod manager to that folder, and very probably installed their game on a specific drive because one is an SSD and one isn't, or because the C drive is only X amount of gigs and is primarily for the OS itself and the stuff you put on the desktop but the D drive is Y gigs and is where you're meant to put all your games, music, videos, and pictures. 

   I also find the 'yeah but mobile types don't understand this'-argument pretty weak. Do we expect people to go from playing Raid and Candycrush (or whatever folks play on phones) to SL? Mobile types have the attention span of gnats, on average, trying to bridge the gap to accommodate those sorts would require SL to be simplified beyond recognition. Or LL could open an official 'how to SL' TikTok where they're fed information in small bursts. 'Press Ctrl + B, left-click on the ground - ta-dah, you made a prim! See part 2 for how to recolour it - like, follow, subscribe, Patreon, OnlyFans, go!'. 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Orwar said:

    I do feel like removing the 'wear' option altogether would make things less confusing, but I'm guessing it's trickier than just throwing a switch somewhere. Besides, certain avatar components absolutely can not be worn in multiples; eyes, skin, body shape, system hair - doing so results in a bake fail, so those particular ones rather need the 'wear' option.

   Do new people need to understand why or how that works though? Not immediately anyway, I suppose.

It would be very simple to present one option - "wear" - which either adds objects/layers or replaces the few special things. It's just a UI thing which doesn't even require any changes to the code of the viewer, and then nobody would have to even think about the difference. (I've posted an example of me making that change some years ago.)

Heck, we should almost certainly at least make "double click add" a default, since it's an adjustable setting anyway.

Edited March 20 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Orwar]

19 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Heck, we should almost certainly at least make "double click add" a default, since it's an adjustable setting anyway.

   Absolutely could. Or at the very least make 'add' the default and give you a warning pop-up (that you can opt out of if you want) that 'wearing this object will replace X because it uses Y attachment point, use add to wear both, or attach it to a different attachment point - do you wish to proceed' or something. 

   Also feels as if WASD-movement should be default. Met both new users and returning users that had no idea you could change it, and with WASD-movement being pretty much universal that feels like the sort of thing that could really make people feel off about the whole thing. 

[Bree Giffen]

I wish we could have an AI figure out our inventory for us and we can ask it in plain language to clothe us. At a prompt I'd say something like, "I'd like my avatar to look like Velma Dinkley today" and poof the AI uses whatever clothes I have in my inventory to build an approximate outfit for mystery solving.

[Sid Nagy]

If we had so many different clothing, hairs, make up and shoes in SL we would need a sophisticated system too, to stay on top of things, I guess.

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It would be very simple to present one option - "wear" - which either adds objects/layers or replaces the few special things. It's just a UI thing which doesn't even require any changes to the code of the viewer, and then nobody would have to even think about the difference. (I've posted an example of me making that change some years ago.)

Heck, we should almost certainly at least make "double click add" a default, since it's an adjustable setting anyway.

If you're changing the UI, don't remove "wear." If there's a coherent use of attachment points it's useful to detach the old pants and attach the new ones in a single action. So - with "wear," set options for things like "Wear as Shirt [attaches to 'right pec']," "Wear as Pants/Skirt [attaches to 'right hip']," etc. Works just fine for no-mod items too, and items remember the last place they were attached. If the viewer can read attachment points for a not-currently-worn item you could even give them new icons.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

44 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

If you're changing the UI, don't remove "wear." If there's a coherent use of attachment points it's useful to detach the old pants and attach the new ones in a single action. So - with "wear," set options for things like "Wear as Shirt [attaches to 'right pec']," "Wear as Pants/Skirt [attaches to 'right hip']," etc. Works just fine for no-mod items too, and items remember the last place they were attached. If the viewer can read attachment points for a not-currently-worn item you could even give them new icons.

Oh don't worry, I'm not making real updates to any viewers. The example I mentioned was just a personal change / concept to make a point about how simple the change could be.

My personal opinion is that the vast majority of people are more confused than helped by the 'replace' feature, even if it could be made to work with lots of manual organizing of attachment points. (We can't rely on merchants to come to a consensus on which "standard attachment point" to use for bra/shirt/jacket or any number of accessories.)

Edited March 20 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Theresa Tennyson]

17 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

People who may have never tried anything other then SL are probably not aware of how other dress up games handle it like one popular on many are aware of that has an inventory like this:

 

Where at a quick glance one sees and can select the hair that will look best.

 

"I remember that it was a bottle-blond style and the picture was taken at a Dutch angle..."

And it's interesting how, in an environment that is set up to use this organization, several of those pictures are useless as teats on a boar hog for knowing how the entire hairstyle will look.

[Persephone Emerald]

57 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

My personal opinion is that the vast majority of people are more confused than helped by the 'replace' feature, even if it could be made to work with lots of manual organizing of attachment points. (We can't rely on merchants to come to a consensus on which "standard attachment point" to use for bra/shirt/jacket or any number of accessories.)

Replacing an article of clothing doesn't seem to confuse users in IMVU, The Sims, or other video games. They don't stack clothes when the wear them, do they?, unless they might be adding a jacket above a top?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

24 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Replacing an article of clothing doesn't seem to confuse users in IMVU, The Sims, or other video games. They don't stack clothes when the wear them, do they?, unless they might be adding a jacket above a top?

I play a bunch of different games, the clothing systems in them are not similarly confusing because they're much more strict systems. This includes IMVU as shown above, which I used to play before Second Life.

You generally don't get to wear everything in one slot, clothes and accessories have well defined "this is where this goes" rules in games. Second Life doesn't have rules like this, you can wear your pants on your head and it'll look just fine because the attachment system is "object agnostic." There's no physical difference between pants and a hat.

If SL was to totally remake the attachment system and create hard categories for mesh clothes (you can wear one thing classified as "pants" and that's it), the replacement feature would make a lot more sense as with other games.

Those are the two ways to go about it, but I think making "add" the default action is much more practical.

Edited March 20 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Replacing an article of clothing doesn't seem to confuse users in IMVU, The Sims, or other video games. They don't stack clothes when the wear them, do they?, unless they might be adding a jacket above a top?

At least in The Sims, it's impossible to stack clothing because the slots are locked in. You set up outfits in a separate environment and when you're running real-time you change them instantly with a Wonder Woman spin.

The other side of simplicity is being limited. To have a truly intuitive and universal UI system for wearing SL mesh clothing and bodies, the UI and necessary data would have needed to be in place before the clothing/bodies were introduced. And there's no guarantee the system would have been the best or most future-proof way of doing things.

Right now The Sims is on their fourth non-compatible generation and even the fourth generation is getting long in the tooth. As far as time goes, Second Life would be the equivalent of The Sims 1 Expansion Pack 35 or so - it's remarkable that it still works at all.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 minute ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I play a bunch of different games, the clothing systems in them is not similarly confusing because they're much more strict systems.

You generally don't get to wear everything in one slot, clothes and accessories have well defined "this is where this goes" rules in games. Second Life doesn't have rules like this, you can wear your pants on your head and it'll look just fine because the system is "object agnostic." There's no physical difference between pants and a hat.

If SL was to totally remake the attachment system and create hard categories for mesh clothes (you can wear one thing classified as "pants" and that's it), the replacement feature would make a lot more sense as with other games.

SL originally had strict slots, and still does for system skin, eyes and brows. We could only wear 1 undershirt, 1 shirt, 1 pair of underpants, 1 pair of pants, 1 skirt, 1 jacket, and 1 tattoo.

Users wanted to be able to stack those layers, so we got this ability. Then after mesh objects were introduced, we wanted to stack these too.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

SL originally had strict slots, and still does for system skin, eyes and brows. We could only wear 1 undershirt, 1 shirt, 1 pair of underpants, 1 pair of pants, 1 skirt, 1 jacket, and 1 tattoo.

Users wanted to be able to stack those layers, so we got this ability. Then after mesh objects were introduced, we wanted to stack these too.

I know this, been here long before mesh. Do you want to go back? How do you propose we do that? I don't have any good ideas, there is too much flexibility in how the current system is used.

[Persephone Emerald]

3 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

At least in The Sims, it's impossible to stack clothing because the slots are locked in. You set up outfits in a Right now The Sims is on their fourth non-compatible generation and even the fourth generation is getting long in the tooth. As far as time goes, Second Life would be the equivalent of The Sims 1 Expansion Pack 35 or so - it's remarkable that it still works at all.

Functionally, Second Life would be similar to The Sims Online, which only lasted about 5 years.

Edited March 20 by Persephone Emerald
Spelling typo

[Persephone Emerald]

3 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I know this, been here long before mesh. Do you want to go back? How do you propose we do that? I don't have any good ideas, there is too much flexibility in how the current system is used.

Do you want freedom to have choices or freedom from choices? I'd rather have the freedom to have choices.

[Arielle Popstar]

5 minutes ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Do you want freedom to have choices or freedom from choices? I'd rather have the freedom to have choices.

It could at least be set up so that mesh wearables are not defaulted to be placed on the r-hand (L-hand in OS) as that would already save plenty of time having to reattach to a different point.

[Persephone Emerald]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It could at least be set up so that mesh wearables are not defaulted to be placed on the r-hand (L-hand in OS) as that would already save plenty of time having to reattach to a different point.

This only happens because many creators fail to set a better attachment point. Hair creators know to set the skull as the attachment point. The pelvis seems like an intuitive attachment point for pants and skirts, so I set this myself for new clothes. I usually set tops to the spine, unless they could be part of an outfit with multiple top pieces, such as a bra, a shirt and a jacket - or when they only function properly when set to the chest or stomach (eg. stripable clothes).

[Theresa Tennyson]

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It could at least be set up so that mesh wearables are not defaulted to be placed on the r-hand (L-hand in OS) as that would already save plenty of time having to reattach to a different point.

That's on the creator/seller. If the seller sets another attachment point when you buy the item it will attach there.

Let's go back - wayyy back - back into time. When mesh clothing was introduced for the system body it couldn't/didn't follow as many bones as current mesh clothing does, and a lot of fitting relied on having the body at certain shape settings. That could have meant that every piece of mesh clothing would have required a different shape, and mesh clothing started out as a complete FTS situation.

Then a few users set up a system of "standard shape" settings that could be used as a benchmark and allowed a comparative amount of both variety and consistency.

The current de facto mesh head UV map is also user-generated rather than LL-generated.

[Charlemagne Allen]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I play a bunch of different games, the clothing systems in them are not similarly confusing because they're much more strict systems. This includes IMVU as shown above, which I used to play before Second Life.

You generally don't get to wear everything in one slot, clothes and accessories have well defined "this is where this goes" rules in games. Second Life doesn't have rules like this, you can wear your pants on your head and it'll look just fine because the attachment system is "object agnostic." There's no physical difference between pants and a hat.

If SL was to totally remake the attachment system and create hard categories for mesh clothes (you can wear one thing classified as "pants" and that's it), the replacement feature would make a lot more sense as with other games.

Those are the two ways to go about it, but I think making "add" the default action is much more practical.

That's the best part of SL. You can literally attach anything to yourself and it will be fine.